Grona wynaadensis - Wayanad Desmodium

Wayanad Desmodium is an erect, profusely branched shrub or undershrub, 3-4 m tall. Stems are round, spreading, rusty to yellowish hairy throughout. Leaves are 3-foliolate, 2-10 cm long; leaf-stalks 1-3 cm long, rusty-velvet-hairy, end leaflets ovate-elliptic or lanceshaped, 2.3-7 x 1-3 cm, blunt at tip, lateral leaflets, 1.5-6 x 1-2.5 cm. Flowers are borne in racemes in leaf-axils and at branch-ends, 8-13 cm long; axis rusty-hairy. Flowers are strictly 2 per node, about 7 mm long, purple, standard broadly ovate, about 6 x 5 mm, hairless, purple; wings ovate, about 3.5 x 2 mm; keels about 3.5 x 2 mm, staminal tube about 6 mm long. Sepal-cup is about 4 mm long; tube about 2 mm long; sepals triangular, nearly equal, about 2 x 2 mm, fringed with hairs at margins. Flower-stalks are about 5.5 mm long; bracts ovate, about 5 x 2 mm, fringed with hairs at margins, tapering at tip, striped. Pods are 2.5-3.5 x about 0.6 cm, recurved, becoming hairless, strongly netveined-veined and black-spotted throughout, splitting through lower suture. Wayanad Desmodium is found in Southern Western Ghats. Flowering: November-January.